Something Precious

Chapter Three

"Alright, let's go." at Minato's command he and Naruto raced from their hiding spot at matching speeds. Minato quickly marked several surrounding trees while the two male chunnin followed at a slower pace. The enemy was momentarily surprised. The Leaf nin used this to their advantage; three enemy chunnin and one jounin were taken down before the others got their bearings. Naruto and the team sensei each took two jounin while Obito and Kakashi worked together on defeating the chunnin. Naruto hoped to get his done with quickly so he could help the two. He didn't doubt their skills, he knew that Kakashi had been an excellent shinobi even when he was young, however two against seven didn't exactly give them good odds.

One of the jounin shinobi infront of him flashed to the right while the other to the left. They both pulled out a long blade katana. While one swung low to his legs, the other aimed high for his neck. As a result he couldn't duck or jump to avoid their attacks. It was a good strategy, it was quite obvious the two were used to working on a team together. But for Naruto - who was used to clever maneuvers such as this one - a trick like this was easy to avoid. He used a simple replacement jutsu and hid in the tree's. Creating two very durable clones to fight the jounins, Naruto observed their fighting styles. Man it would so much easier if he could use rasen-shurikan, but unfortunately the one who created the rasengan was only a few yards away and would definitely question the use of his self-developed jutsu by a stranger, especially it's final form which he had never perfected due to the extreme amount of chakra necessary to preform it.

The jounin seemed to only use kenjutsu combined with chakra against the clones which gave Naruto an idea. Kakashi's blade had been knocked out of his hands and lay at the base of Naruto's tree. He jumped out of it and grabbed the blade just as the two clones were dispersed in a white cloud. The jounin now once again ganged up on him. He deflected the blade of one before targeting the others hand. The blade struck home and cut the ninjas tendons in his right arm, but the jounin was quite persistent because he just switched his blade to his left hand and continued fighting. He ducked the attack that followed and cut the tendons of his other hand making his blade fall to the ground. He quickly scooped up the chakra blade channeling his own chakra into it, and sliced through his neck decapitating him. He faced the other on coming nin who had a renewed fire in his eyes, and ducked to the left before he ran the blade through the base of his skull, severing his brain stem granting him a quick death.

Naruto glanced to Minato - who had already killed one as was seemingly almost finished with the second - before racing to assist Kakashi and Obito who were fighting several yards away. They were almost overwhelmed. It took less then a second to close the distance between them, killing a few on the way. He handed Kakashi his blade, who fought more effectively with the thing in hand. With Naruto there now, the chunnin were dealt with quickly.

Minato too, finished his battle and the four went back to Rin making sure she was alright. She was fine.

Rin did a quick examination of her teammates, concluding that there were no major injuries. Obito had a fractured arm and a few scratches which Rin quickly healed before moving on to Kakashi who just pushed the girl away insisting that he was alright. Knowing Kakashi, Naruto guessed that that was probably true. At least he didn't fight like he was injured. None the less Rin kept fussing until he let her treat his scratches. Minato had a gash in his shoulder but was otherwise unscathed.

Almost as an after thought, Rin checked over Naruto who was leaning heavily on a nearby tree fighting exhaustion as sage mode wore off. It was all he could do to keep from passing out on the spot. His brain was still muddled from the battle with Madara which he forced from his thoughts until later. Time travel may also have had a place for blame. The golden colour faded from his eyes.
"Naruto, you're about to collapse. Are you sure you are okay?"